Your and LK's response to that article:
----------
Dismal Science?
To the Editor
I enjoyed Gene Epstein's short profile on MIT economist Paul Krugman ("Not Just Academic," November 9). We have all had a laugh at academics of the Dismal Science recently, with the Long-Term Capital fiasco. Some of Krugman's reasoning shows us why, when they leave the realm of theory and attempt to practice in the real world, economists usually perform like The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight.
Krugman's comment that the ideas of the Austrian School could not be expressed mathematically, and therefore he ignored them, gave me a chuckle. That is very similar to a professor of literature stating that Milton's Paradise Lost was the only epic poem worth study because The Iliad and The Aeneid weren't composed in English.
MICHAEL D. BURKE
Houston
-----------------
To the Editor
I can't believe Gene Epstein pulled his punches with Paul Krugman. This guy suffers incredibly from the ivory tower conceit that he can't possibly be wrong. Specifics:
1. His dismissal of the Austrians and their conceptual descendents is plain stubbornness. His neo-Keynesian outlook is at odds with the operating assumptions of the U.S. government, Wall Street and Alan Greenspan. Epstein is right; he is dead wrong.
2. His snake-oil salesmanship of capital controls was self-aggrandizing nonsense. When Malaysia actually implemented them, he immediately distanced himself by offering "guiding principles." I'm sure Marx would contend that he was right, too, but that the implementation was flawed.
3. Finally, Krugman has displayed no compunction against using his poison pen against fellow economists. But unlike Epstein, who attacks nutty ideas, he seems motivated mostly by his immense ego. Epstein's gentle allusion to his "Legend of Arthur" piece was far more compassionate than he deserves. I'm sure had their roles been reversed, Krugman would be far less generous.
LAWRENCE KAM
Boston
|
